Steelmark
The Steelmark is a logo representing steel and the steel industry owned by the American Iron and Steel Institute, and used by it to promote the product and its manufacturers.
The logo was incorporated as the emblem of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Huachipato, the first initially using the same design as the Steelmark, but later modified to include the team's full name.
Description
The Steelmark consists of three four-pointed starlike figures within a circle. The stars in the design approximate a type of geometric figure called an astroid, a particular type of hypocycloid with four cusps. The original figures were most likely constructed with the help of French curves and a bit of artistic license, as the logo was designed decades before computer-aided graphics came into common use. The actual figures are somewhat more concave than mathematically true astroids. A yellow figure is located at the top of the design, orange to the right and blue on the bottom, with the word "Steel" on the left side. The logo appears within a gray ring against a white background.History
The Steelmark logo was designed by brand consultancy firm Lippencott & Marguiles and unveiled in January 1960, with AISI president Benjamin F. Fairless proclaiming that the campaign marked "the first time that steel has been merchandised industry-wide at the consumer level". Fairless predicted that the program would help American steel makers fend off demand for imports.Individual steel makers could use the design to promote the steel in finished products, and to help create a competitive awareness of the strength and quality of steel against aluminum and plastics. In 1964, the steel industry distributed 21 million of the Steelmark decals to be affixed to appliances and other household products.
In the original 1960 announcement of the program, the three hypocycloids were said to represent "the modernity, lightness and stylishness" of consumer products made of American steel. Later interpretations were that the Steelmark highlighted the attributes of steel, with yellow representing "lightens your work", the orange denoting "brightens your leisure" and the blue meaning that steel "widens your world". The definition of the logo components was updated to represent the three materials used to produce steel, with yellow for coal, orange for iron ore and blue for scrap steel.